Chapter 1
by jmsutherland
Summary: This was initially published as a single story but it was so long that people kept losing their place: I assumed that anyone interested would simply download it, but they were reading it online. I hope publishing it as chapters will stop people getting lost and make it easier to follow the footnotes. I've also revised it.


Page **16** of **16**

_High in one of the myriad and mysterious towers of Unseen University there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping at a chamber door; only this and nothing more. Arch-chancellor Arcane Remembar –formerly Lecturer in Recent Runes- looked up from his papers._

"_Come!" he called, failing once again to achieve that strange mixture of "Enter" and "Go way!" that had seem to come so easily and naturally to Mustrum Ridcully, his late and vaguely lamented predecessor._

_The Librarian knuckled his way across the floor and folded himself into the chair directly opposite the Arch-chancellor._

"_Good morning, Librarian," he began, "and what can I do for you today?"_

"_Ooook," said the Librarian, who had accidentally been transformed into an Orang-utan some years before and had since resisted any attempts to change him back._

"_Yes, I can see that." Like the rest of the staff he had learned to speak Orangish over the years. "What precisely is it that's bothering you?"_

"_Oook!"_

"_They often bother me too, but this is a university so at certain times there are bound to be students. It's unavoidable, I'm afraid."_

"_Ook, ook," said the Librarian petulantly._

"_Again, it is not without precedent for students to wish to visit the library. Though I'll admit it is unusual," he laughed, mirthlessly._

_The Librarian was not amused, which he demonstrated by smiling, menacingly._

"_Oooook!" he protested._

"_Oh, I see," said Arcane, "it is the books themselves that are complaining, rather than you. Well that is a most serious situation. I shall call a meeting of the senior staff for this afternoon; I trust you will be able to attend."_

"_Ook," the Librarian affirmed, apparently mollified._

"_Until then, in that case," said Arcane._

_The Librarian nodded his acknowledgement; then barrelled his way out of the door, slamming it gently behind him._

_So, now, in addition to the fact that Hex, the CPU-continuing purpose unknown- in the Department of High-Energy Magic was seemingly spewing-out nonsense, or at least more nonsense than normal and the plague of "unidentified rash" –that was apparently afflicting the student body- there was this. For the third time that morning Arcane sighed deeply and wished he'd become a night-soil man. _

**Chapter I**

The Pseudopolis Yard nick ran like a well-oiled machine. Admittedly, it was a machine that frequently broke down, needed constant maintenance and often had to have parts replaced, but it was always well-oiled. Especially when Nobby Nobbs was around. Captain Harry Mudd hadn't noticed Lance Constable Buttress move in any way, but he knew he'd been spotted. That was the way with gargoyles.

When he'd first come to the city he'd thought they didn't move at all, ever. However, Commander Carrot had told him that, though they could sit perfectly still for years, when they did move it was faster than any human could see. But Harry wasn't just any human. For a number of reasons he suspected he had some vampire-blood in him. There was a time when he'd used to tell people that, though he'd stopped, as they always laughed at him. Anyway, he'd started paying more attention and had now, on a couple of occasions, seen gargoyles catching pigeons. Only just, because goodness they were fast.

So, in spite of not seeing Buttress move he knew that his arrival had been noticed, recorded and passed down the line. Sure enough, when he turned into the Yard, Lance Constable Anthracite was standing rigidly to attention. Of course, being a Troll, whatever Anthracite did, he was pretty rigid while he was doing it.

"Mornin, Sur!" he rumbled.

"Good morning, constable," said Harry, returning his salute.

He didn't know how they did it. In the couple of seconds between his coming into the gargoyle's line of sight and his turning the corner, Buttress had managed to inform Anthracite of his imminent arrival so that the Troll was already saluting, because it took Constable Anthracite a couple of seconds to do that, even with a week's notice. It had to be a stone thing.

As Trolls were pretty much made out of stone and Gargoyles looked as if they'd been carved out of stone he'd speculated that perhaps Gargoyles were carved out of Troll. Even Lance Constable Smite –Smite the Unbeliever With the Wisdom of thy Words- could spot the gigantic flaw in that one.

"Ok," he'd said, "even supposing you could somehow tie a Troll down for long enough to do the carving. He'd get free eventually and come after you. And who'd be mad enough to want to do something like that in the first place?"

Constable Smite, being Omnian, knew a lot about wanting to do mad things, so if even he thought the idea was mad then it was probably mad-squared, possibly cubed. Smite was currently courting a nurse from Morpork Mercy called Shame –Shame the Infidel with the Beauty of thy Virtue. It seemed to Harry to be very odd relationship. Lance Constable Smite and Nurse Shame seldom ever met and, when they did, they barely looked at each other and hardly spoke. On this evidence he wondered how Omnians ever managed to make little Omnians, though it was clear that they did, as there were certainly a lot of them around the city these days. And what was undeniable was that: with their platinum hair and their coffee skin; their noble bearing and beautiful features, they looked like gods' chosen people. Harry knew there were many strange gods up on Dunmanifestin, but he thought it a particularly odd one who would make such stunning-looking people ashamed to look at each other.

So, Gargoyles weren't carved Trolls. Trolls living in the icy winds near The Hub were not only smart, they were quick and nimble, but nothing like Gargoyle speed. And, though Buttress could have nipped down off the roof, told Anthracite, and got back up faster than a human eye could follow, Harry would have seen him. They had to be communicating some other way. Still, it was a mystery that would have to wait.

Sergeant Boltmaker was on the desk and she tipped her helmet at him. Boltmaker was an older dwarf, not one of these frivolous, fifty-year-old girls, like Littlebottom or Deepdelver who wore high-heeled boots and makeup and suchlike. In fact the only clue that Boltmaker was actually female was the two little bows she had tied in her beard. And they were made of wire. Not that he had anything against Sergeant Littlebottom, of course. Cheery's lab and Doctor Igor's autopsy suite were the two most efficient things in the Watch. Or any other Watch, for that matter. These days Cheery only ever left her lab to visit murder sites. Igor never saw any reason to leave Autopsy as they brought the murder sites to him.

"Anything important today, Sergeant?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," replied Boltmaker, "the Commander wants to see you as soon you come in."

"I'm intrigued," said Harry.

"I'd be worried," said Boltmaker.

This was worrying. If the stories were to be believed, Boltmaker wasn't worried when a mineshaft collapsed on top of her, trapping her up to her neck for six days. Or when she was cornered and attacked by three Trolls out of their outcrops on Slab. In both cases she was reported to have said: "But I wasn't alone, my axe was with me."

So, if she was worried it was, well, worrying.

Then suddenly there was a waft of something sweet and dank and alluring. He turned and caught a glimpse of laced-up, shapely calf and was lost.

"I'll get right on it, Sergeant," he said, absently, but his mind was all on Sally.

Sergeant von Humpeding had been the first vampire on the watch and it hadn't been easy for her. Initially even Commander Vimes and Sergeant Angua had been against her, as had everyone else. No one likes a bloodsucker, or trusts them. Yet she'd come through it and proved them all wrong. Now she was a highly-valued officer of the watch. She also tormented his dreams and a great many of his waking hours too. But then he was hardly alone in that.

It didn't seem possible for her to have an ample bosom and generous hips one minute, but a slender, coltish figure the next. She could flash her eyes at you like a seductive, older woman; but look again and it was the face of an angelic boy. Albeit the type of boy that certain schoolmasters shouldn't be allowed anywhere near.

Sergeant Angua had seen the affect she had on all the males in the Watch, –and many of the females- even the Trolls, and tried to put a stop to it. First she'd said that Sally wasn't allowed to wear black lipstick, or black nail-varnish on her fingers and toes. She'd had to drop that when the Black Ribboners objected that it was the equivalent of saying that Dwarfs couldn't have beards. Next she objected to her wearing such short skirts; until she measured them and found them to be no shorter than anyone else's. Harry had to admit that they certainly looked shorter. A lot shorter. Eventually Angua had given up. Maisy Midden, the cleaner, said she'd heard her explaining it to Commander Vimes:

"We could dress her in old sacks and pour ashes over her head and she'd still look stunning. It's allure. She was born that way and there is nothing anyone can do about it, not even her."

For her part Sally was fed-up to the sharp teeth with "allure". Oh, it was great if you wanted to lure someone into a trap so that you could suck their blood. That was why they'd evolved the way they had. But it was a right pain in the elbow if all you wanted was to go down the shops for some bread. Also, there were men and women queuing up to be her victims. And not attractive ones either. It was fine if you lived in Themiddleofwherestadt, Überwald. There you could pick and choose who you wanted to entrap. But in somewhere as crowded as Ankh-Morpork people were falling over each other to throw themselves into traps you hadn't even laid.

It wasn't as though she hadn't tried: floppy hats, loose-fitting blouses, baggy trousers… But as soon as she walked out of the door her morphogenic field would take over. The hat would become small and stylish, the blouse was suddenly a crop-top to show-off her belly-button and the trousers were three-quarter length and skin-tight. The most voluminous and unflattering of dresses pinched its waist and dropped its neckline within seconds of her putting it on. There was nothing she could wear that didn't make her look like she'd like to be wearing nothing. And that was another problem.

If the attention became too annoying, or sometimes for purely police reasons, she could vanish into a mist, or into a lot of bats. However, unlike Vlad or Otto Chreik, when she re-materialised she didn't do it fully-clothed. She'd lost track of the number of times she'd had to walk back through The Shades without a stitch on. On the other hand, if you're a helpless girl stranded, naked, in the most dangerous parts of a dangerous city, then being a vampire has many advantages. Though The Shades was still a very dangerous place, it was safe if you were a frail young woman on her own with no clothes on. Word spread quickly in The Shades and there was no point in taking suicidal risks. Some people can spot a trap, even when there isn't one there.

And another thing about her affect on the male, of several species, was that she couldn't actually see the attraction herself. Naturally, there was no point in looking in the mirror but she kept a portrait of herself that her mother had done when she was young. She wasn't ugly, of course, whatever that meant, but looked rather gaunt, she thought and, really, a little bit ferrety. And that was her own mother, after all, who was, presumably, inclined to be flattering in her depiction of her daughter. But that had been over a hundred years ago; she had no idea what she looked like now, any more than anyone else did. Apart, perhaps, from Harry Mudd.

Like almost every male on the Disc -and every female- he looked at her with desire in his eyes. The difference was that he didn't do it in the normal, wide-eyed way that made people look as though they'd been mesmerised. It was as if he could see through the allure at what she actually was and fancied her anyway. It was rather intriguing, and a trifle disconcerting, but it would have been an impossible relationship. There was the age-difference for one thing: he was late-twenties; she was a hundred and forty-eight. They wouldn't like the same music. On the other hand, her best female friend –in fact her only female friend- was a werewolf married to a six-foot-two Dwarf, so you never knew.

Angua now had two children: three-year-old Wolfgang –named for Angua's grandfather- and little Ironhammer, who was named after Carrot's mother. Sally was even Ire's godsmother. As Angua had put it: "I can't think of anyone better able to watch over her than a woman who'll live forever and could rip a man's head off with one hand, can you?" Her soft-skills hadn't much figured, though she really was working on them; along with her domestic talents. She so much wanted to be a "normal" woman that she'd even lied about her age. Only Angua knew that she wasn't really fifty-five.

However, though she could "feel other people's pain", because she'd caused enough of it in her time, and "see things from another's point of view", because she could take over their minds, it turned out that cooking and cleaning weren't quite so straightforward. It wasn't that she couldn't do it. She cleaned her apartment every day, and gave it a _good clean_ every other day, though something deep in her blood cried out against dusting and clearing spider's webs. She was also, so she was told, a superb cook. It was just that there was something fundamentally wrong with her even trying. Angua had said it was like watching someone in a ballgown and a tiara doing the washing-up. These were things done by Igors or pale, young wenches, and not by someone whose name was three-pages long. But was that really any odder than a werewolf changing nappies and knitting booties?

There was nothing Salacia liked more than a morning, after a tough night-shift, spent chatting to Angua and playing with the children. She could almost hear generations of ancestors turning in their graves at such an offence to vampire-kind, and the problem with her ancestors was that once they had stopped turning they might climb out of their graves and come and get her; but before any of that there had to be breakfast at Bernie's.

Bernie the Butcher had been the most feared gangster in Morpork before Sally met him. Ankh had a different class of gangster; not better, just different. The Thieves Guild had apparently taken out a contract on him with the Assassins Guild, but even they couldn't frighten him, or even touch him. And then he and Sally had had a chat. It was the making of her reputation. As far as everyone was concerned she had taken a terrifying, murderous thug, and turned him into a respectable purveyor of fresh meats. Only she and Bernie knew that he'd been dying to get out of the gangster business for years and the only thing stopping him had been the prospect of, well, dying. In a long and nefarious career he had simply made too many enemies to just hang up his cleaver and go quietly into retirement. And that's where Sally came in, because she'd had a proposition for him.

If a rumour could get around that there was something so utterly terrifying that it scared even Bernie the Butcher; then it'd probably scare a lot of other people as well. More importantly, it would likely frighten them off seeking revenge on Bernie too. And Sally could appear in many scary guises, because she could do a lot of scary things inside people's heads. Never mind the scary things she could physically do to them, if they were too stupid to run away.

And so, Bernie the Butcher shut up shop and opened another as… a butcher. It's what he'd trained as when he was young, after all, and how he'd got his nickname; it had just kind of stuck, and had also sounded suitably menacing in his new line of work. He'd never actually butchered anyone, but you couldn't blame people for jumping so far to the wrong conclusion that they missed the sandpit altogether. Mind you, he'd broken more than his fair share of bones in his time; he was no Omnian Sister of Kindness, to be fair.

It'd all gone pretty smoothly. A couple of people had come round needing to settle old scores and he'd settled them: some with monetary reparation; some in other ways. And Sally had put the frighteners on all the rest, quite literally. But all that had been right at the beginning; everything was quiet now. Bernie was a respectable small-businessman with a wife and family and he had Sally to thank for it. Making sure that Sergeant von Humpeding had the very best cuts from the very best beef-cattle to be found on the Sto Plains was the least he thought he could do in return.

For some unfathomable reason friends seem to enjoy going through little rituals where they say the same things to each other every time they meet and then laugh. They think other people find this endearing. They're wrong.

"Morning, Sally," said Bernie, "what can I get you?"

"Steak sandwich, hold the bread," she replied.

"How would you like it?"

"Raw."

It wasn't a substitute; it wasn't intended to be: the blood was cold and the meat was so tender you could have eaten it with rubber teeth, buts gods it was good. She'd often had to put up with the taunts of others that there was something shamefully human somewhere in her lineage. She didn't know if there was a substance to them but if there were she was sure that filet steak was speaking to her "inner-woman".

The Carrots didn't lock their door –there really was no one suicidally stupid enough, even in Ankh- Morpork… and she and Angua were now such good friends that she never bothered knocking, yet when she walked into the room Angua looked shocked.

"What's wrong?" asked Sally, alarmed.

"You've got blood on your fangs!"

"Oh, that," she said, taking out a napkin and wiping her mouth, "that's just breakfast."

"Anyone, I know," laughed Angua.

"Not funny, my furry friend."

"Sorry," Angua didn't apologise, "Ire's teething and I've got teeth on the brain at the moment."

"Well, if she has her mother's teeth I can see how that would be a problem."

Angua laughed again: "Shall we declare peace?"

"Done. Where is she, by the way?"

"Sleeping, for once, thank gods."

"And Wolfie?"

"Wrecking someone else's house with a bunch of other little boys at a birthday party."

"Hmmm, so what are we going to do?"

"Do you drink…vine?"

"At eight-thirty in the morning!?"

"Well, if you're not going to have a drink when you get off work, when are you going to have one? Unless you do not drink…vine."

"No," said Sally, "I'm OK with…vine. Especially after vurk. What's your excuse?

"I'm the mother of two small children whose husband is a policeman. What more excuse do I need? But I'm having one glass and you're finishing the bottle.

"Well," said Sally, "when you put it like that…"

Angua raised her glass: "To tonight!" she said.

"What's happening tonight?" asked Sally.

"You're coming to dinner."

"That'll be nice for me, but my mother shall be furious that I didn't send a thank you letter for your kind invitation."

"I'm sure she'll understand as I've only just invited you. How is the Lady Lachrimosa, by the way?"

"Still dead."

"Oh, that's nice, give her my love. I haven't seen her since the wedding."

Like most Überwald weddings, that of Carrot and Angua had been a strained affair. Though this particular one was as strained as a crossbow-string poised on the verge of driving a bolt through someone's skull. It almost strained the word "strained". But, of course, Absolutely Everyone simply had to be there. Angua had got along rather well with Sally's mum. Better than with Carrot's at least.

"Will it be just we three?"

"Not on this occasion," said Angua, adopting Sally's lofty tone, "we shall be joined by Hartmut Albrecht Lothar Verführung Lang-Eckzahn von Dreck und Messing.

"Doesn't tinkle any chimes. Though, I feel that it should."

"Well, you work with him."

Sally frowned and thought for a second; then her eyes went wide.

"Harry Mudd!? So, he's been lying about his name?"

"Yes, and you're not the only one who's been lying about their age."

"What do you mean?"

"My husband has been doing some investigating, as is his habit, and he thinks Captain Mudd a.k.a. Herr von Dreck und Messing may be older than he says. A lot older.

"I'm intrigued."

"So are we; that's why he's coming to dinner."

"Ah, fiendish. Do you mind if I cook tonight?"

"We were rather counting on it."

Angua's cooking might charitably be described as "competent". Even the Disc's most forgiving heart could not describe Carrot's efforts even as "incompetent". It's was rumoured that he could fry water.

"Ok, I'll finish my wine and go shopping."

"Don't you need a sleep?"

"I once didn't sleep for two years; I'm sure I'll manage."

"And the Guild of Weather-Diviners predicts bright sunshine."

"Damn! I hate the rain."

"Mmmm, Sal?"

"Yeees?" said Sally, immediately suspicious.

"Would you wear something restrained this evening?"

"No."

"Well, would you at least try to wear something not too sexy?"

"What would be the point?"

"Fair enough. Then can we have steak for dinner?"

"No."

"Oh, Sally, please."

"No! Carrot would only want it "well-done" and the last time he did that it made me cry. We're having fish."

Sally could sneer "well-done" so that you could hear the inverted-commas.

"I did think it was odd of you to cry."

"Well, it was either that or bite him."


End file.
